If you’re a player or casual observer, the video game industry seems to have it all. Yet growth is now illusory, layoffs abundant, and game/studio shutdowns common. Why? And how might things change?
Just make games with older graphics; it’s cheaper, reduces visual bloat, and encourages player imagination to fill in the gaps, and investing xxx million dollars in a video game is dumb.
Seriously though, who asked for photorealistic graphics? If people agreed on a reasonable target, we could just have games at a reasonable size and cost, hardware upgrades wouldn’t need to be so insane, and teams could be put on other important things like, I dunno, making sure the game works instead of just looking pretty.
(I
didn’t readskimped through the article)Just make games with older graphics; it’s cheaper, reduces visual bloat, and encourages player imagination to fill in the gaps, and investing xxx million dollars in a video game is dumb.
Seriously though, who asked for photorealistic graphics? If people agreed on a reasonable target, we could just have games at a reasonable size and cost, hardware upgrades wouldn’t need to be so insane, and teams could be put on other important things like, I dunno, making sure the game works instead of just looking pretty.
Do I need my games to have photorealistic graphics? No.
But there is something about the occasional game with such an impressive visual fidelity it makes you stop and go “wow, that is pretty”.
It doesn’t make up for poor gameplay, but played on top of good gameplay it does create an additional sense of wonder/amazement.